The Betta Fish Myth

I have so many ideas, questions, and concepts going around in my head, and a sense of possibilities, and a feeling of suspicion - so many things that I can't express it all. This is the process of formulating an idea, something new that I haven't thought of before. Every time I try to start the story, there are three or four parts of the story that happened before it, and I feel like I have to start at the beginning. (*It turns out that I ended up writing this story for, like, over an hour. A really long time. I never even got to explain the rest of the ideas and the feeling of suspicion. It was all about adoption and community - I had all these things I wanted to say. I will have to write it in a separate blog - it's too much.*)

The concept being formulated is a plan or outline of how to build a community, and what kind I'd like to build, and what is its mission statement. I've been playing a make-believe game of 'build a community' in my head for a while now. It's like playing Roller Coaster Tycoon. (I can't play that game anymore unless I go out and buy a new CD. It got stuck in the CD drive, and I forced it open, and the CD shattered. Fortunately, it wasn't a unique data CD - just a commercial game CD. So anyway now I'm stuck playing video games the old-fashioned way: closing your eyes and imagining something.)

The betta fish isn't the beginning, but it will give you a sense of what I'm thinking about. I rescued the betta from Peter. Over the past year, Peter has been sicker than he was before, and he gave up on trying to take care of his two betta fish. One of them died. The other was still alive, and I took it.

After I tell you about betta fish, you will understand this, that when I say one of those fish actually DIED, you will know that it had to be neglected a LOT for a really long time in order to die.

I hadn't really seen betta fish before. I had glanced at them, I am sure I had seen them and maybe my parents had owned one before, but I really didn't know much about them. I vaguely knew that they were known for fighting.

So I was shocked and horrified whenever I first saw the conditions they were living in. They were in two separate tiny vases with less than a gallon of water. There was a houseplant over top of the vase, closing it completely under a lid. The roots of the plant hung down into the water. Each fish was alone in its own vase. There were decorative colored glass stones.

I started asking questions. Why don't they have a filter? Aren't they lonely? Isn't that too small for them? Do they get bored? How do they breathe? He answered some of my questions, and I encountered for the first time the Betta Fish Myth.

The Betta Fish Myth. I am going to tell the myth the way that he told it to me. Please note that everything I'm about to say is, in my opinion, a bunch of crap.

Betta fish don't have filters because in the wild, they lived in tiny, stagnant, muddy little puddles and rice paddies in Asia. So a small, confined space isn't a problem, it's a great thing. Whenever they need more oxygen, they go to the top and gulp a bubble of air, so there's no need to put bubbles in the water. (I was used to fish tanks that had a bubble stone going all the time, and a filter.) Betta fish aren't lonely, because they hate the presence of other fish, and they will attack them and fight to the death. They actually LOVE being in a small vase, because that's how it was in Asia in the wild. (People who believe the Betta Fish Myth use the word 'agoraphobic' to describe these fish - afraid of open spaces.)

And the houseplant with its roots dangling in the water - what's that all about? Well, that's what we folks 'round here call an 'Eco-System.' It means that the plant benefits from the fish, and the fish benefits from the plant, and we are all happy. Whenever the fish (you know, I really am a prude about the subject of going to the bathroom, I don't know the appropriate words to use here) poops and pees in the water, the plant roots absorb the wastes, along with any leftover food crumbs that could be rotting in the water. So it cleans out the water, which helps the fish. And the plant is happy to receive these nutrients too. So both of them are in Harmonious Balance with one another, in a perfect little universe of their own. And when we gaze at this vase with its plant and its betta, we breathe a deep sigh of peacefulness as we marvel at the perfection of this tiny, harmonious ecosystem.

Oh, and I forgot to explain the lid over top of it. Sure, usually we worry about fish not being able to get enough oxygen in the water. Usually we circulate the water around and fill it with bubbles and we make sure that there aren't other organisms using up the oxygen. But that doesn't matter here, because THE ROOTS provide oxygen for the fish. So what if the plant on top is on a closed lid (except for the hole that the roots dangle through, which is for all practical purposes totally blocked by the roots, so no air circulates through it).

Oh, and it HAS to be a peace lily, too, or else some other particular kind of houseplant which I can't remember the name of. Because, as we know, all of the rice paddies and mud puddles in Asia had a peace lily dangling its roots into the puddles for the bettas. Not some other kind of plant! Only a peace lily! It HAS TO BE A PEACE LILY! (I got that aspect of the myth because one of the plants was dying, on one of the two vases, and I asked him if he needed to buy a new plant, and what kind of plant it had to be. IT HAS TO BE A PEACE LILY! NOTHING ELSE!)

Well, I heard all of this myth and immediately rejected the whole thing as crap. All I could see when I looked at the fish - instead of a peaceful, safe, harmonious little ecosystem, was: BOREDOM. And next after that: SUFFOCATION. Boredom. Suffocation. Boredom. Suffocation. Boredom. Suffocation. Hours and hours and hours. Weeks and weeks and weeks. Must die. Must die. Must die.

I found it so disturbing and it made me so angry that I was angry at Peter (and everybody else) for believing it. I could not imagine anybody being fooled by this crap.

I asked him a couple of times if he really wanted to keep those fish. Maybe I could take them home. He didn't really say yes, and he didn't really say no. No decision was made. So I left them there at his house.

So I thought of more questions every time I saw the fish. Since when do ROOTS produce oxygen? I know that LEAVES do, but roots? Leaves produce oxygen AS A BYPRODUCT OF PHOTOSYNTHESIS. The sun shines on the leaves and they produce oxygen. Now that I think about it, I could be wrong - maybe it's plant RESPIRATION that produces oxygen. I'm not sure now - maybe I will look it up. But I had the idea that only the leaves would produce oxygen, not the roots. That could be wrong.

Still, even if I'm wrong about that - even if the roots really do produce oxygen and it goes into the water - how would we KNOW? Did anybody actually VERIFY that the roots of the plants are putting oxygen into the water? Are there any types of plants whose roots DON'T put out oxygen? Are we sure that we have the right kind of plants?

And what about the boredom? Don't even go there. I was thrown in The Meadows (psych hospital) for five days, and that was a luxury hotel compared to this tiny fish vase. I knew how it felt: BOREDOM. BOREDOM. BOREDOM. Oh look, we have a little bookshelf with books to read. Wow, somebody chose the books really carefully to make sure they were EXTREMELY BORING. We don't want our spirits to get roused too much. Wow, over here we have some board games. They're REALLY BORING. Hey look, here are some jigsaw puzzles. Hmm, lots of pieces are missing! Don't you love jigsaw puzzles with lots of missing pieces?

Human nature never changes. People will believe these myths. Some group of people or some type of living creature is believed to be a certain way when it isn't. People used to believe that it was okay to sail over to Africa, grab a bunch of black people, bring them over here, and make them work on the plantations, and that was okay. Nowadays, they believe it's okay to sail over to Thailand, yank the fish out of their stagnant, muddy, less-than-a-gallon puddles (which don't exist, by the way), and bring them over here and put them in vases, to create an Ecosystem.

I'm not a vegetarian and I'm not going to be one. So yes, I still believe it's good, healthy, and okay (but not pleasant and not happy) to kill animals, and eat them. I think it should be done as quickly and painlessly as possible. However, there are limits on how much torture an animal should endure and for how long. I don't want animals sitting there miserable for months or years at a time, even if somebody is going to kill them and eat them eventually. It may seem contradictory, but I want the animals to at least be comfortable and happy while they're alive, although you should avoid forming an emotional bond with them if you are going to kill them. This is a difficult subject to argue about and I won't get into it too much. But my argument is: if wild carnivores like lions, tigers, dogs, etc can kill other animals for food, and that's an 'Ecosystem,' then humans are also an 'ecosystem' whenever THEY kill and eat other animals. Humans are animals. I've decided that humans are an amazing, unique, intelligent, wonderful, special species... of animal. We are not 'something else.' We're animals.

Birds talk to each other. Bonobos talk to each other. Dolphins talk to each other. Supposedly (of course) 'we don't understand what they're saying.' Supposedly, we don't know how to decode what they're talking about. Now, there might be a magazine article every now and then, making it seem like 'scientists are making progress, and they can understand a little bit, and VERY RECENTLY there was a TEENY TINY discovery that helped us understand A LITTLE BIT MORE about animal language... but of course, REAL understanding is DECADES away in the future, because we aren't far advanced enough for that.' Like everything else, real understanding is always 'decades away,' and there aren't any scientists who are really all that INTERESTED in the subject of reading the animals' minds to understand what they're talking about or how it feels to be some other species. So, nobody's really BOTHERING to research this, because nobody really cares, and it really isn't useful or interesting to anybody. Even though the government has trillions of printing-press dollars and tax dollars that it can freely use however it wants to, for its own purposes, of course we 'can't get any funding' to do much research on this topic. (I'm being sarcastic, by the way. All of the research has already been done, DECADES AGO. If anybody ever says that some scientific advancement is still decades in the future, that actually means that it has already been done, decades in the past, and you didn't hear about it.)

So, with what I know now, I'm sure that yes, somewhere on earth, there are scientists who DO know EXACTLY what the birds, bonobos, and dolphins are saying to each other, because we have enough technology to read their emotions and thoughts while they're talking. But this is taboo, because it would also tell everybody that we're reading humans' minds too, and we're not allowed to talk about that.

If you saw 'Finding Nemo,' you might remember the sharks with their vegetarianism support group: Fish are friends, not food. I felt sorry for the sharks. Of course: they're sharks! They eat other fish. It seems unnatural to expect the poor sharks to stop eating fish. That must be really difficult for them! How will they meet their nutritional needs? When you look at them as sharks, you have sympathy. They're animals. They can't control themselves!

But we can, because we're different. At least, that's what they say about us. Supposedly humans are different.

I'm saying that there are contradictions which result from knowing that we are animals just like other animals. We kill and eat meat just like tigers and sharks do. But we can at least give animals the courtesy of not making them miserable for months or years before finally killing them. And we can cooperate with members of our own species, if we talk to them instead of kiling them. And if a Nittany Lion attacked me while I was out walking in the woods, and killed me, I would hope that it went quickly and was over with, and I would hope that I had written my will and told everybody what to do with my body and my belongings, and I would hope that I had left something valuable behind me in the world, something that had made my life worth living. But it would be fair. It's terrible, but fair.

So it seems like a contradiction, but there really is such a thing as having compassion and courtesy for this fish being kept in a tiny little vase with nothing but its boredom and suffocation. Even though I would kill and eat a fish, and even though fish emotions are hard to read, and even though they can't talk, I still think that it's uncompassionate to do what people are doing to these bettas.

So when Peter got sicker this year, he didn't have the energy to do much around the house, and he started neglecting his bettas. He fed them less and less often, and didn't empty their bowls out to clean them. The algae grew on the sides and you could no longer even see anything in there. One of the plants was mostly dead and the leaves were brown and falling off. Peter finally assumed that both fish had died. So he didn't even open the lids anymore to look in there, check on the fish, and drop some food in there. And he did absolutely nothing with the bettas for weeks and weeks and weeks, assuming they were dead.

Well, bettas are very durable. It turns out that the betta fish myth exists because these fish are so hardy, they can survive almost anything. They can survive extremely long periods of starvation, extremely dirty water, and unbearable conditions, and still be alive after several weeks, or even months. So yes, you can get away with doing horrible things to them, and it seems like it's okay, because they're not dead.

Just because something is ABLE to survive in horrible conditions doesn't mean that's how it SHOULD be, or that those conditions are GOOD for it. They say bettas are agoraphobic, that they LIKE a tiny bowl, the smaller the better. They came from tiny mud puddles in Asia. Well, how did they get in that mud puddle in the first place? Doesn't that mean that originally there must have been a pool, which dried up, leaving only puddles? Where were they born - in the puddle? Where did their mom and dad live? Did their mom and dad live in that same puddle too? What happened to their mom and dad after the kids were born? Are they dead? Don't they lay lots and lots of eggs? Where are their brothers and sisters - in some other puddle? Do they crawl across the dry ground to go find a separate, isolated puddle of their own? So, they fight to the death every time they see another fish - so do the babies kill their parents? How can these fish reproduce and survive to the next generation if they just go around killing everything they see? If they are chasing the other fish away, where do they go? How can the fish go crawling across the ground over to the next mud puddle? These are tiny little fish that don't really look like they can go crawling long distances in the open air over the ground.

It's true, they DO have an air-breathing organ, called a labyrinth. This much of the myth is real. They really do go to the surface now and then to gulp a bubble of air. However, it's not made to breathe large amounts of air constantly for a long time. Just one small gulp now and then. So they're NOT crawling across the ground to find some other puddle, breathing air the whole time. And they aren't like Flying Fish, who can leap out of the water and fly a short distance before landing back in the water.

Like I said, I couldn't imagine that anybody would just believe this whole myth without asking any questions. It seems obvious to me that if the fish is stuck in a puddle, IT MUST HAVE COME FROM SOMEWHERE. A larger pool must have dried up, leaving the fish isolated. Does that mean the fish LIKES it that way? The fish didn't CHOOSE to get stuck isolated in a little puddle after the water dried up. It just had the bad luck to get stuck there. It's like hibernation: I imagine that winter-hibernating animals don't really ENJOY hibernating. They do it because they have to, not because it's fun. Like bettas, who might get stuck in a puddle, from bad luck, and be able to survive, waiting and waiting, hoping for the next rainfall, hoping that someday, it will flood again, giving them the hoped-for opportunity to swim away and meet another fish, to mate and lay eggs (if they can overcome their agoraphobia, that is!). So it looks like they're sitting there, waiting and hoping, waiting, waiting for the next flood. In other words, ***THEY'RE NOT HAPPY!!!***

Like the Palestinians, stuck in their refugee camps. You wouldn't want to take home a Palestinian and let him/her run around free, because over there in Palestine, they're stuck in a cage all day, and that's what they're used to. So they're agoraphobic. It's best if you keep your Palestinian in a caged area. Don't let them get too anxious about wide open spaces. Make sure you don't allow your Palestinian to have free trade, good food, clean water, or electricity, because that's not how things are 'in the wild' where the Palestinians came from. If you leave them alone too long, they will get rebellious and misbehave, so every once in a while, you have to raid their caged area with tanks and guns, and make sure they're not planning anything sneaky. So they're sort of a high-maintenance pet. That's why people aren't going out to the wild and gathering Palestinians and taking them home to the US.

When I was at Peter's house a couple weeks ago, I looked up at the green-coated filthy vase - the one with the DEAD plant - and I saw something move, silhouetted against the light behind it. I knew he had not done anything to them for a long time and he told me that he thought they were both dead. You really couldn't see in there because of all the green filth on the sides. But something moved.

(And Peter really had been deathly sick and had not had the energy to do anything, and was barely surviving, himself - his kidneys failing, going to dialysis, taking several different drugs which made him so nauseated he would retch and couldn't eat. And me, angry about the fish, but also understanding how sick Peter was and how he just couldn't take care of things anymore...)

I lifted the dead plant up and opened the lid. The betta was alive.

I looked at the other vase, just to check. There was a betta in there, but it was definitely dead. Its body was on the bottom, lying still, rotting, covered in green algae. Oddly enough, that was in the vase where the 'ecosystem' plant was still alive. The surviving betta was in the DEAD plant vase, without its 'ecosystem.'

It was lying on the bottom, skinny and wasted away, its fins pale and colorless, almost dead. But it moved.

I decided that it was time for me to take home the fish. This time I wasn't going to let him say no. All along I had kept thinking that maybe he was going to be able to take care of them again. I had even tried to help, by going to Petco and buying him a bottle of special Betta bowl cleaner that he had asked for. But it didn't help. He was giving up on the fish and he told me a couple times that he believed they were both dead.

When we took down the vase from the shelf, and opened it up, there was a look on Peter's face. He can't really weep because he has abnormal tear ducts that don't produce tears very well, and he has dry eyes and other eye problems. So he didn't weep, but it was a terrible look of pain and grief on his face when he saw, yes, the fish was alive in there. He stood there staring into the distance for a minute with grief on his face. I was shocked. "What's wrong?" I said. But I understood. We finished putting the fish into another container, ready for me to take home.

So I got a serving bowl out of the cabinet, a big white bowl made to hold food (not friends). I filled it with bottled water, added a small sprinkle of salt, and put the betta in there. He was still alive. (No, I wasn't getting ready to cook him.)

I googled bettas, found out what they like to eat, and went to Petco to buy him some frozen brine shrimp. I gave him a whole block of brine shrimp and he shredded it. I had to empty out the water and get rid of all the leftover shrimp. But it was the first time he had eaten in weeks. I've been feeding him every day, just a little chip of frozen shrimp (not a whole block anymore) and he has fattened up and the color came back to his fins.

I gave him a little speech on that day. I looked at him and he looked back at me. I said, "I'm not fooling myself. You're not here because you LIKE me. You're not here because you WANT to be here. You're here because you're stuck in a bowl of water and you can't get out. You're thousands of miles away from a warm pond or a stream where you could live. And I would ship you there, but it would be expensive, and I don't know how to do it, and I don't know anybody who would take you and put you into the stream, and send me a photograph to verify that yes, you got there alive, and yes, you were dumped into a stream like I said. So I'm not going to pretend that you LIKE me."

He's not healthy - he doesn't really swim and he just lies on the bottom, and he has some unhealthy-looking dots, and some black fin rot on the tips of his fins. I can't keep the water clean enough, and ideally, he should eat some variety, not just brine shrimp all the time. And I'm sick too, and on top of that, I don't WANT a pet betta. I never wanted a betta fish. It's true, they do attack other fish, so if you want to keep them in a tank, they need space, and nooks and crannies to hide in. But they CAN live with others nearby, as long as they can go someplace where the other fish are 'out of sight, out of mind.' But I don't have a tank, and I don't want to keep a fish in a tank at all. I want to mail him back to Thailand, so that somebody can release him into a pond or a stream, or wherever it is that betta fish REALLY LIVE. (Not a mud puddle. Please.)

I am compromising - I am going to let him go to somebody who will put him in a tank. But it will be a large, clean tank, and he will be fed almost every day (yes, it's okay to skip a day now and then - just not weeks and weeks without food), and the water will be changed, and it might have a filter (yes, it's KIND OF okay to let them live in water that isn't moving, but there should at least be plenty of open surface area up above them, not some tiny closed lid underneath a plant). And maybe I can persuade the new owner to put some other fish in there with him, maybe some species of fish that is known to do okay with bettas - I read that some fish are okay with them.

I'm compromising because he will die here, too - I can't really take care of him, I don't have a good tank to put him in, and I don't WANT a betta - my heart's not in it. I almost killed him by accident just yesterday when I changed his water. I was dumping him from one bowl into another, and he somehow ended up staying in the first bowl without any water left, after all the water poured out. And he was lying there on the glass, exposed to the air. And after I gently dumped him into the new water, he just laid on the bottom like he was dead, and a bubble came out of his gills, and he didn't move, and I realized I had dumped him into ice cold water - which will kill them - I killed my guppies years ago by accidentally letting the tank get too cold.

So I quickly filled the bathtub with hot water, and floated the ice-cold bowl of water in the tub, letting the hot water surround the bowl. And then I did a big no-no, and I poured some hot bath water directly into the bowl - you're not supposed to give them chlorinated tap water. But he perked up immediately with the warmer water. But, I almost killed him, and I don't trust myself to take care of a fish that I don't want. So I am giving him to somebody else.

I decided that I want to take care of humans instead of fish. That's where I want to invest my efforts. I want to watch progress. I want to empathize with animals that I understand and that understand me. I want to love and be loved by somebody who is there BECAUSE THEY *LIKE* ME. I want to be with someone who is free to leave, but doesn't. I want to be with someone who walked to my house, of their own free will, because they wanted to go there. And I want to raise children who are capable of love, who will laugh, and enjoy themselves, and hug me, because they're happy and this is where they belong. I want to be with human adults and children, people who communicate and cooperate as often as possible, instead of being forced. That is my ecosystem.